Medications often require administration in a series of doses at specific time intervals. For example, some medications require daily administration, while others may require administration every two, four, or six hours. A frequent problem in medication timing is that a patient often cannot remember the last time medication was administered. Patients may forget a dose, thinking that they have already taken their medication, or they may overdose by administering medication too frequently.
There have been many attempts to introduce timers integrated with pill bottles to help patients keep track of the last time they retrieved medication from a pill bottle. Examples of pill bottles with timers are found in Brandon (U.S. Pat. No. 7,408,843), Newman (U.S. Pat. No. 8,045,420), Ditzig (U.S. Pat. No. 6,667,936), Osberg (U.S. Pat. No. 6,707,763), Morse (U.S. Pat. No. 7,236,428) and Walters (U.S. Pat. No. 5,741,661). These pill bottles have timers incorporated into the cap of the pill bottle and the timer automatically resets when the patient removes the cap from the bottle or when the patient replaces the cap back onto the bottle.
To effectuate an automatic timer reset, timer control circuitry in the pill bottle cap is electrically connected to a switch that resets a timer display back to a zero point. Manual timers on pill bottles make use of a physical button near the timer display that patients can press to reset the timer. Patients can tell how long it has been since the last dose by viewing the timer display. Despite the simplicity and usefulness of timers on medicine bottles, they are not without their limitations. One limitation is that for timers with automatic resets based on cap removal, the timer resets whether or not the patient has actually removed any medication from the bottle. Patients can remove the cap, become distracted, and not remember whether they have actually removed any medicine from the bottle. This scenario is especially problematic for patients who are suffering from forgetfulness. Manual timers suffer from the limitation that patients must actually remember to press the timer reset button each and every time they have taken medication. If the timer does not display an accurate time since medication was last removed from the bottle, then the timer is useless.
In view of the above limitations in the field, there currently exists a need in the industry for a simple device that can inform patients how long it has been since medication has been removed from the pill bottle.
All patents, patent applications, and non-patent references disclosed throughout the entirety of this application are hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes in their entireties.